Regarding water. H2O is the heaviest item that you put on the boat. The NORMAL water plan is to account for 1 gallon/person/day. In the case of Aquarius, estimating a max 15 day passage * 5 crew =75 gallons. The Jeanneau 43 has a total capacity of 145 gallons. IOW, by topping off the tanks, they would have carrying 70 gallons more than necessary or 560 additional lbs., probably on the wrong side of the boat. Heavy is slow. I left SFO for Oahu with 5 people and 80 gallons, and arrived with 15 in the tank plus my 5 emergency gallons. This s SOP on a race boat amigos.

You drink it, you don't bathe with it, or wash dishes with it.

There is a different mindset between cruisers and full-blown (yes, I know) racers. We became acquainted with a Kiwi who raced a custom mini-Transat. To my mind you have to be a bit nuts to want to race a 22 footer from France to Brazil but to each person ...

Anyway, after his first such race (well back in the pack) he asked a French guy who was the superstar of such racing how to improve. The first suggestion was to throw out 2/3 of the mandated water supply immediately after starting the race. He did this next time and had a much better result. Of course this is in a race boat where everything is made out of carbon to keep the weight down.

__________________
Heading back to Lake Ontario for this summer. Relatively few stops along the way from Grenada. Martinique, Guadeloupe, St. Martin (must have something to do with the French food), then Bermuda, New England and up the Hudson/Erie Canal. We were going to go via Newfoundland and Labrador but June remembered that one of the kids is getting married this summer - details, details!

There is one good thing about this thread, and that is, it exposed several unpleasant owners whom I would politely decline crewing for.
We're in this game to have fun, remember?
And I nominate poopdeckpappy for Sail-Net's Best Skipper Award.

Hey Rockdog.....thanks for the great story and generating this entertaining thread. I have one question just for clarification. When you started using the autopilot had you already abandoned the race and doing it for safety?

__________________
-"Honestly, I don't know why seamen persist in getting wrecked in some of the outlandish places they do, when they can do it in a nice place like Fiji." -- John Caldwell, "Desperate Voyage"

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-"Honestly, I don't know why seamen persist in getting wrecked in some of the outlandish places they do, when they can do it in a nice place like Fiji." -- John Caldwell, "Desperate Voyage"

Reading some of the replies on here from sailors/racers who have some what more experience and who seem to be a tad harsh on RD, I thought I would throw this in here, really has nothing to do with sailing but....

Two days ago we had a birthday party on the beach for my son who wasn't supposed to see his next BD, there was over 30 people there. We had canopies, big a$$ BBQ and herd of burgers to cook & all the fixings and then some. Next to us was two young couples with their little kids and they too were doing a BBQ. Problem was, in their rush to get to the beach, they forgot a bag that had most of their BBQ stuff.

The guys doing our BBQ were feeding over 30 people like a full on catering service, never missed a beat. The group next to us? not so well, he was trying to cook without BBQ tools, picking hot food off the grill with his fingers and dropping some in the sand

Seeing this, did we bash them for being ill perpared? No, we leant them our extra tools and gave them our extra condiments, they were very thankful, we were glad to help and we knew ( because they said ) next time they'll be better perpared.

What's this have to do with RD's adventure? Maybe not a F'n thing but then maybe it does. We don't need to beat our fellow sailors down for a bad judgement call, anymore than we need to beat down a fellow beach goer for being ill- perpare to BBQ, Hell, as well setup as we were? I know CruisingDad would have schooled us on the art of fine BBQ'ing.

I guess the point is, no matter how much a expert you think you are, there is someone out there that we'll school ya, so tread lightly on your brothers.

OH!!!, btw, here's the best part, I think; Sitting on the seas wall was a young homeless guy, propably hadn't eat'n in days, Levi ( our head chef ) cooked the guy a big fat juicy doulbe decker cheese burger, the famlies next to us, the ones we helped, Well, they played it foward by fixing him a plate of beans and potato salad.

We didn't bash him either.

That's a nice story, you are quite obviously a generous and compassionate man, with an admirable willingness to forgive the sort of mistakes any of us can make, at any time... Glad to hear your son is doing well, of course...

But I suspect you're right, and the day you've described has not much relevance to what's transpired in this thread... :-)

To make an analogy between the respective lack of preparation for a beach barbecue, and a 2,000+ mile offshore passage seems just a bit of a stretch... It's one thing to lend tools or advice to a group in an adjacent barbecue pit, but quite another to receive similar assistance - whether it be the gift of an extra 50 gallons of water, or putting crew aboard to unsnarl a spinnaker, or offer some kite-flying 'instruction' - midway between LA and Hawaii...

I'm sorry, but the OP has reaped much of what he's sown in this thread... Much of his account as posted seems questionable, and in the process he has quite likely impugned the reputation of members of the Transpac Race Committee, and the command of the US Navy's SWIFT, among others. I simply find it highly unlikely that Dave Cort "hung up on him" in the manner in which that phrase is generally used, and I seriously doubt the encounter with the naval vessel went down precisely as he described...

But again, it was when he started talking of potential legal action, that the tide changed for me... Might your attitude towards your neighbors at the beach the other day possibly have been a bit different, if they had been blaming the Parks Department for not supplying grilling tools with the barbecues for their own lack of preparation, for example? And, when he reaffirms his belief that a lawsuit in the case of the RULE 62 is not justified, and might make it more difficult for him to find crewing positions, but that in this event, he might feel entitled to compensation for his "mistreatment", well... the depth of such hypocrisy is stunning...

So, no, I don't see this thread as being primarily about "bashing a fellow sailor"... Sure, it's become personal on some levels, but the tone of the OP laid much of that groundwork from the outset (he himself did a pretty good job of "bashing a fellow sailor" who is not here to tell his side of the story, ofter all), and the fact that he still thinks that much of the blowback he's received is due to an ongoing feud with another poster here, is pretty clear evidence that he still doesn't get it, what his mistakes might have been, or his own responsibilities towards accepting them...

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